


Old Habits

by AidaRonan



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), A lot - Freeform, CatDad!Daryl, CatDad!Rick, Fandom Trumps Hate, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Older Characters, Prostate Massage, Rick arresting daryl, bottom!daryl, i still haven't gotten better at tagging, top!rick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:59:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: One last job. When the Sons of Sanctuary finally catch up to Daryl after over a decade of hiding out in the city, that's the offer he gets. One more job right in the comfort of his own sprawling, and he can retire and live the peaceful life with his aging cat. Finally.The only problem is he's not the only person who's relocated over the years.





	Old Habits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CowandCalf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CowandCalf/gifts).



> I want to thank everyone who bid on a FTH story from me. In the end, CowandCalf won with a very generous donation. I promised 5k words, and me being me, this happened. lol 
> 
> Pretty much the entire idea for this story was prompted. It's probably the most detailed prompt I've ever gotten. lol But I really like the end results, and it was fun exploring the boys a little later in life. Plus cat dad Daryl. 
> 
> I was given pretty open permission to share the story with the rest of the fandom. So here it is. Alternative tite: Two Men and a Cat.

_Present_

 

It’s pushing a hundred in downtown Atlanta and Daryl feels every bit of that heat. The old clunker’s air conditioner doesn’t work for shit, and there’s strands of gray-streaked brown clinging to his forehead. With the windows down, he knows he has to be working up one hell of a sunburn on his left bicep, but rolling them back up would be like trapping himself in an oven. Besides, he shouldn’t be in the alley too much longer.

Fingers thrumming impatiently on the steering wheel, he looks up at the rear view, at the metal door where his former associates are meant to emerge. A glance at his watch, another dry swallow and a wish that he could pop around the corner to the convenience store for a soda or a water or a pack of smokes.

They’re late, and already Daryl’s brain is working overtime. A hundred different ways this could go wrong. Dwight had assured him that it was one more job for him and the Sons of Sanctuary were willing let bygones be bygones. They would let an old man retire in peace.

He’d also assured him nothing would go wrong. Like Daryl’s never heard that bullshit before. Like he doesn’t have a rap sheet from the old days when shit went wrong every five seconds.

Another glance at the door, and he sees it flying open. Dwight’s in the lead. His face is covered, but Daryl can tell it’s him from the long, lanky frame and the bit of greasy blonde emerging from under the ski mask. Laura and Jared follow behind him, the latter dragging Eugene.

There are no cliché canvas bags with giant dollar signs or even pillow cases stuffed with jewels. A flash drive or two stuffed into pockets, full of enough data that one job is all it ever should have taken. Greedy fucks.

He watches them sprint and half-carry Eugene toward the rust bucket they intend to push into the Chattahoochee. Closer and closer and-

A knock on the hood of the car makes Daryl start, his eyes darting from the mirror to the front of the car. It’s been a long time since someone’s caught him off guard. His eyes meet another set of blues, familiar even with the addition of several more creases at the corners.

A badge raised in his direction, revolver falling as his head tilts with recognition, and all Daryl can think is,  _figures._

* * *

 

_16 Years Ago_

 

“You have the right to remain silent,” Rick said, pushing the man over the hood of his car where he couldn’t see the way his hands shook as he put on the handcuffs. It wasn’t his first arrest or anything. But it was the first time he had to deal with a criminal beyond simple drunk and disorderly or DWI.

And it was definitely the first time he had to deal with a criminal that looked like  _that_ , forcing Rick to remind himself more than once that he had a wife and that shacking up with criminals was generally frowned upon in his line of work.

They’d all thought the alarm out at the plant was another false one. Their security system apparently had a faulty wire that the entire plant and half of the employees at ADT were trying to locate with no luck. Maybe the criminals had been banking on that—police assuming it was another bullshit waste of time, taking their sweet ass time to show up.

Apparently they hadn’t been banking on Rick and Shane being bored as hell, sitting in the parking lot of the all-night convenience store, eating cold fried burritos.

“May as well,” Shane said, shoving the last bite in his mouth and cranking the cruiser.

“May as well,” Rick echoed.

Even though they’d made it to the plant in minutes, they’d still been a little shocked to find someone outside, sitting out front in a rusted Nissan, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the door.  

“Yeah this is Walsh and Grimes out at the Stryker Plant. We’ve got a possible 10-15 in progress, requesting backup.”

“Sure it’s not a false alarm?”

“Yes, Basset, I’m absolutely sure the open back door and the guy sitting here in the car with no plates are both false alarms.” Shane shook his head.

“10-4 Walsh, Grimes, this is Ramirez and White. Two minutes out. On our way.”

“I’m gonna go for the driver,” Rick said. “At least if they come out, they won’t have anywhere to go.”

“I’ll cover you.”

In the end, covering him wasn’t really necessary. The guy was unarmed and got out quietly, letting Rick pin him to the hood and read him his rights.

“Your friends inside armed?” Rick asked. The guy turned his head back, like he was trying to decide if he should or shouldn’t remain silent.

“Don’t know if there’s anybody inside,” he said. “Just pulled over here to take a piss. But if there is anybody in there, dunno why they would be.”

Rick had to give him that it was a genius way to answer. If the guy could afford more than a public defender (or was lucky enough to be saddled with one that hadn’t already been worn down by the system), they’d even be proud.

“Thanks,” Rick said, before dragging him to the squad car and pushing him into the back seat.

* * *

_Present_

 

“You’ve got to be joking,” Rick says, watching Daryl step out of the car. It takes nothing to recognize him, even with nearly a decade between when they last saw each other. Since then, he’d gotten divorced, been offered a detective position in the city, watched his son grow up to hate his father as most teenage boys do.

With all the changes in his life, he’d never expected to see Daryl Dixon again, especially not like this.

“Hey,” Daryl says casually, like they’re two old friends meeting accidentally at a grocery store. And if Rick wasn’t wearing a body cam in an alley full of other officers, he might be just as casual. They could catch up, he could maybe pretend he never saw Daryl here at all.

Or maybe…

Or maybe what? The ghosts of old feelings try to climb out of the graveyard Rick stashed them in a long time ago and he carefully adds another layer of dirt.  

He sighs, raises a finger and motions for Daryl to spin. Daryl reluctantly does, putting his arms behind his back and letting Rick cuff him. He doesn’t do the cuffs nearly as tight as he would on anyone else. He doesn’t have to ask Daryl to spread his legs for the pat down either. He leans over the car like he practiced for it, placing his feet apart.

Rick has a flash of a night the previous week, of a twenty something who cost fifty-something in a place that could only be accessed by passwords and whispers. Of broad tanned shoulders that reminded him of a criminal he used to know.

Still knows, apparently.

“You have the right to remain silent,” he says, squatting down and working his hands from Daryl’s ankles, up his legs to his inner thighs, then higher still. The pat down takes far longer than necessary. Daryl doesn’t seem to mind.

* * *

 

_16 Years Ago_

 

“Hey,” Daryl said, calling out to the blue-eyed deputy after being shut away in a holding cell with Dwight and Gavin. The deputy faltered in his step, turning back to him.

A million rushed “ain’t gay” remarks flooded back to Daryl’s head, all the times he’d thrown them at classmates, his dad, his brother, fucking Dwight. A voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Will Dixon actually laughed at him, but even it couldn’t stop his eyes from flicking down the officer’s frame, quickly noting the leanness of it, the way those awful, boxy tan uniform pants were incapable of hiding the thickness of his thighs.

Chiseled jaw, perfect hair, eyes that Daryl had no trouble imagining boring into his soul while the man thrust deeply inside of him.

He cleared his throat and thought about the steps to cleaning a squirrel before his body did something that even his baggy jeans couldn’t hide.

“What?” Deputy Grimes asked, his head listing an inch or two to the side.

“Just wondering when dinner is. Haven’t really had shit to eat today.” It was true too. Between nerves and preparations, he’d completely forgotten.

“I think you missed dinner,” Grimes said. “By a long shot.”

“Breakfast then.” Right on cue, Daryl’s stomach gave a loud growl. He hoped that was enough to show the deputy he wasn’t just some asshole jailbird yanking his chain. Grimes looked down at his torso, then back up.

“Whenever it comes,” he said, already turning to walk away.

“Whatever.” Daryl shrugged, retreating back to the metal bench of the cell and sitting down, leaving as much space between him and Gavin as possible.

It was an honest surprise a couple minutes later when Grimes showed back up with a few saltine crackers.

“All I had in my desk. They’re probably stale,” he said, slipping them through the bar.

“Thanks,” Daryl said, taking them from his outstretched hand and locking eyes with the deputy again.

“Hey man, if you’re taking requests, I-”

“Shut up, Peterson, you old drunk,” Grimes said quietly, nodding once at Daryl and leaving before anyone else got any ideas.

The crackers were definitely stale, but they settled his stomach enough for him to lean back on the concrete wall and sleep.

His dreams were full of blue.

* * *

 

_Present_

 

“We know each other well enough for me to ask a favor?” Daryl asks, looking at Rick through the screen separating the back seat from the front. A small part of him hates that he can’t see his full face. He’s gotta be in his fifties too, just like him, but he’s still handsome as hell. A few more wrinkles and the scruff on his face is more salt than pepper, but the jawline is still there, the eyes. And the gray tinting his wavy hair has made him even more ridiculously attractive, a feat Daryl wouldn’t have thought possible until he’d actually seen it.

“I guess that depends on the favor,” Rick says. They’re alone, each of the others in cars of their own. Daryl heard Rick tell the uniforms that it was meant to be a divide and conquer situation, that the one with the mullet would probably talk if none of the rest of them did.

He’s probably right. Daryl barely knows Eugene—the tech scheme is new—but he knows him well enough to know that the slightest whiff of fear would probably see him tuck his tail between his legs while he pissed down one of them. If he found out later that Eugene spent his whole ride to Rick’s precinct spilling his guts, he wouldn’t be surprised.

“You already got the key to my place out of my pocket,” Daryl says, trying not to think too hard about the way it felt to have Rick’s hand sliding into his front pocket. He’s not sure his dick can even stir anymore on its own, but if it can, that train of thought could definitely do it.

“This?” Rick asks, holding up a plastic bag with a little brass key and Daryl’s wallet. The only things he had on him.

“Yeah, don’t give it to processing or whatever,” Daryl says. “I’ll give you the address to my place. Or, I guess you could get that from my shit.”

“I’m not following, Daryl. Why am I going to your place?” Blue eyes glance back at him in the rearview. “You’re not asking me to hide evidence or anything, are you?”

“Ain’t no evidence there to hide. Askin you to feed my damn cat.”

“You can call someone to go get him after your processed through,” Rick says.

“Her. And Rick, how long have you known me? You really think I got somebody to call?”

“Then animal control will go over. They’ll take her to the shelter.”

The word ‘shelter’ sets off a mild panic in Daryl’s chest. Pushing aside the pain he feels at the thought of giving her up, the idea of her being carted away is too much. If Miss Louise was still young and spry, he has no doubt she’d charm some other poor sap the way she charmed him when he found her. But not now.

“That can’t happen,” he says, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. “They’d kill her.”

Rick doesn’t answer back, probably because he knows that saying they wouldn’t isn’t a guarantee. In a city shelter, if you don’t get adopted soon enough, that’s always possibility. His cat though, they wouldn’t waste the space that could be given to a healthy animal that actually has a shot at adoption. Maybe they’d give her a day or two and a plea on Facebook for some kind-hearted person to make her comfortable. On the slim-to-none chance that they had an open space, they might let her stay until they needed it. Might.

But he knows the grim reality.

“She’s old as hell, no teeth left. I have to feed her this mush they give me at the vet’s office. A shelter’d just put her down.” He hates the edge to his voice when he even thinks about it. Fuck, he loves that stupid cat so much.

Rick stays quiet for a moment. His blinker ticks, and they turn the corner, passing by a McDonald’s and a gas station.

“Daryl, why the hell are you back with Dwight? I’m asking as an old friend, not a cop. Off the record.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice,” he admits.

“Money?”

“Nah. Boss doesn’t really let people go without a fight. Moved to Atlanta to try and get away, but he found me, sent Dwight who said that if I did this one last job, they’d let me go.”

“Do you know who this guy is?” Rick asks.

“Ain’t tellin you that, and don’t go askin any of the others neither. You said off the record.”

“Yeah, but if you agreed to turn-”

“I ain’t. He’d kill me and you and anyone either of us ever cared about. Probably my cat too.”

“Daryl, we-”

“I’d rather do the time. He’s got a fucked up system of morals. He’ll see all this as fair’s fair. That’ll be the end of it, and I can live the rest of my damn life in peace.”

“What about the other yous?”

“Too damn old for that shit, Rick. I ain’t no crusader for justice. Just a guy who wants to curl up with my cat until I manage to smoke myself to death.”

Daryl doesn’t need to see Rick clench his jaw in the rearview to know he’s done it. Without another word, he pulls the unmarked car into the parking garage at the precinct. Rick pockets the key before escorting him inside.

* * *

 

_15 Years Ago_

 

Staring up at a concrete ceiling day after day, night after night, Daryl had made a lot of plans during his first stint in the joint. He’d done the prison’s GED program, taken a job in electric, told his cellmate that when he got out, he was gonna find one of those do-gooders who hires felons and settle down.

On the day he was released in jeans that barely fit and a shirt he’d forgotten he even owned, he stepped out of the prison gates to find Dwight leaning on the side of a pick-up truck. Half his face was gone, replaced with misshapen wax that drooped near the corner of his eye.

Daryl didn’t need to ask. He’d been in the courtroom when Dwight threw Gavin under the bus. His public defender had begged him to do the same, said he’d negotiate with the DA if he’d only agree, but Daryl had taken the stand and shrugged like he knew nothing.

Gavin wasn’t Negan, which meant giving him up hadn’t gotten Dwight something worse, but it was clear Negan had made him pay for his indiscretion.  

“Boss has a job for us,” Dwight said.

“I’m done. Got a job lined up and everything.”

“None of us are ever done. You know that.”

“Sure we are. Just gotta earn enough points to buy our freedom, right?” Daryl asked. Dwight didn’t even dignify it with a scoff. Everyone knew the amount of points you needed to get out of Negan’s organization was an ever-changing number no one could hit. If it was a thousand when you got in, it was a million by the time you racked up a grand.

“Get in the truck,” Dwight said.

Taking one last look at the blue sky, Daryl let go of his hopes for a different future and pulled on the door handle.

* * *

 

_Present_

 

Rick takes him to an interrogation room instead of a holding cell. Quietly, he undoes Daryl’s cuffs, not bothering with re-cuffing him to the bars attached to the tabletop.

“You hungry?” he asks, his face close enough for Daryl to pick out individual specks of gray stubble. There’s a twin pair of freckles on his cheek that wasn’t there years ago.

“Starving.”

“Thought I told you once if you were gonna keep up this bullshit, you should at least remember to eat first.”

“Yeah, well old habits and all that.” Daryl shrugs.

When Rick comes back twenty or so minutes later, it’s with a box of pizza and a couple Cokes. A notepad too, though what he expects to write in it, Daryl doesn’t exactly know.

“Should we be gettin a lawyer?” he asks, opening the box the second Rick sets it on the table. Pepperoni all over, half with mushrooms, half with olives. One corner of his mouth twitches at the fact that Rick still remembers the way he likes his pizza after all these years.

“Maybe after the pizza.” Rick picks up a slice, catching an olive before it hits the table. “For now, I just want you to tell me about your cat.”

The click of a pen, the sounds of chewing.

“Name’s Miss Louise,” Daryl says.

“Miss Louise?” Rick’s eyebrow quirks up.

“Little girl neighbor named her. But Louise was my grandma’s name, so.” Daryl shrugs again.

“Where’s her food?”

“Cabinet left of the sink. She takes half a can in the morning, half around five in the afternoon.” Daryl pauses to open his Coke and take a sip. “There’s a couple Tupperware bowls up there too so you can throw stuff in the fridge.”

Rick eats and scribbles at the same time.

“Oh and mix it with water. There’s a measuring cup up there. Just fill it up and mash the two together with a fork.”

“Uh huh.”

“If you got time, her toys are in the box under the coffee table. Doesn’t play much anymore, but if you drag the ribbon around a little, she’ll follow it. Keeps her from layin around and sleepin all day.”

“And when she runs out?” Rick asks. “Of food.”

“There’s cash in the-”

“I’m not worried about that. Where do you get it?”

“Dr. Stookey near Grant Park.”

“Got it.” Rick jots that down too before grabbing another slice. “Anything else I should know?”

“If she rubs on your legs a lot, she wants her belly rubbed. She’ll flop over for it.” Daryl runs his free hand down his face trying not to let the realization that he might not see his cat for a very long time sink in. Before Dwight had shown up on his door step, his whole life had been his cat and working to afford to take care of her. Hell, in a lot of ways she was the thing that kept him going on the days he might have otherwise thrown his hands up and told the whole universe to screw itself.

He composes himself quickly, clearing his throat.

“Might wanna invest in a good lint roller,” he says. True to his word, Rick doesn’t start the cop questions until the pizza’s gone. Until then, they play catch up, laugh about things that used to hurt that seem so trivial now, joke about the Falcons finally winning a Super Bowl. Rick tells him all about Lori and Shane and Carl and moving to the city, clearly not missing the way Daryl sits up a little taller in his seat when he finds out Rick’s single. He doesn’t comment on it though, so Daryl tells him about the day he met his dumb cat, about finding out his brother died through a text message, about hiding from his past.

When they’ve nibbled on the crusts as long as they can, Rick gathers the trash and leaves to call a lawyer.

* * *

_15 Years Ago_

 

Rick had to stop himself from saying ‘huge, tanned biceps’ over the radio. They’re the first thing he noticed when he and Shane arrived on the scene.

The name Daryl floated across his brain before he even consciously made the connection. Sure enough, there he was, sitting in the driver’s seat with his elbow resting in the open window. A delicious tingle of excitement ran through his limbs and danced in his fingertips before he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

“Grimes?” the voice crackled out of the speaker. Somewhere midway through describing the suspect, he must have stopped talking.

“Yeah, uh, I’m pretty sure it’s Daryl Dixon. He should have a file,” he said, before spelling out the name for the dispatcher. “But white male, late 30s or early 40s, can’t remember. Dark hair on the shaggy side right now.”

“10-4, backup en route.”

“Copy,” Rick said, before putting the radio down and turning to Shane. “I’m gonna go ahead and approach.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Dixon won’t be armed. He’s not that stupid.” Rick didn’t add that a small part of him was already delighting in the idea of even a few seconds alone with him. That a very dark part of him was playing out daydreams about things that could never, ever happen. Things that involved questions like ‘you wanna get out of this?’ or ‘think we could work somethin out?’ That long shaggy hair begging to be grabbed and used to move Daryl’s face up and down his cock definitely wasn’t helping.

He stepped out of the car, his boot hitting the gravel driveway of the warehouse. Even from a distance, he could see Daryl watching him approach in the side mirror. He’d probably known they were there the second they’d come into view.

But he wasn’t stupid enough to run from the cops either.

Sidling up to the car, Rick watched him visibly relax. Apparently Daryl recognized him too.

“Didn’t I get a letter from you from prison?” Rick asked. Like he only vaguely remembered. Like he hadn’t read it far more times than five whole sentences ever warranted. “I seem to recall you sayin you were done with this shit.”

“Thought I was,” Daryl said, giving Rick a look that made his heart constrict just a bit. “Want me to get out?”

“Guess so,” Rick said, stepping back so he could open the door. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me who’s inside, what they’re doin, and if they’re armed.”

“Don’t suppose you’ll give me a million dollars and a plane ticket to a non-extradition country and then look off over there for five or ten minutes?” Daryl asked, speaking a little louder when the rusted door of the old Buick gave a loud screech. “Warehouse seems like a weird place to keep a gun though, don’t it?”

He shrugged and turned around, putting his hands together behind his back. That dark part of Rick’s brain whispered things again, things about taking him there on the hood of the getaway car, things about shoving him to his knees. Things about taking him away from there and from whatever made him  say ‘thought I was’ with that crease between his eyebrows.  

Rick handcuffed him gently and led him back to the squad car.

* * *

 

_Present_

 

Given Daryl’s record, a six month sentence seems lenient in Rick’s opinion. He’d testified during the trial, a brief questioning about the day he arrested him, the prosecution bringing up the fact that Rick had met Daryl before.

His eyes locked on Daryl, he’d kept to the facts, knowing the man would understand, that he wouldn’t see it as any kind of betrayal. In some ways, they were both men who had to do their respective jobs.

And that part of him that wanted to stand up and say that Daryl was a great man who deserved to be free, that he had maybe been in love with him since the first time he saw him? He’d kept that buried like always.

The only place that ever saw the light of day was when he was pounding it into someone else. When he  tipped the boys extra and asked if he could moan that name against the shells of their ears. When he requested ‘that one with the shoulders’ again and again, leaving every time and swearing he was going to stop going before he became some perverse cop story on the 6 o’clock news.

Rick makes it two weeks after the trial before he drives up to the Georgia State Correctional Facility. He tells himself that he made it two weeks on his willpower alone, that it most definitely wasn’t because it’s the first time that his work schedule has corresponded with visitation day since Daryl got sentenced.

No, definitely not that.

He checks his cell phone one more time before opening the glove compartment and throwing it inside next to the manual and a bunch of stray ketchup packets from different fast food establishments. He picks up a couple printed photos from the passenger seat, briefly considers leaving them behind because it feels stupid to have gone through the trouble, then gets out.

On his way to the front doors, he falls into step behind a woman and two small children. They whisper excitedly about seeing their dad. The woman scolds one of them for asking the other if they think daddy has “shanked anybody” on the inside.

He gets through security faster than the others in line before him. Probably the detective shield he flashes when they ask for ID. Inside is a standard visitation room, all sterile metal tables and chairs. He chooses one near the windows and sits down, swiping at the corners of the photos with his thumb.

A quiet buzzer announces the arrival of the prisoners, like some sad trumpet fanfare. Rick sits up straighter, watches the line of men bleeding through the door opposite the one he came in through. Their uniforms are a dull gray, some with complexions and attitudes to match. He glances down at his own clothes, at the tight dark wash jeans and plaid button-up he’d chosen. Even he couldn’t justify going through all that trouble for any reason other than wanting to look good for him. He’d even fucking ironed.

His body reacts to Daryl before he even registers him in his mind. A breath catches on the way in and Rick clears his throat and watches him approach. All he can think is that Daryl didn’t have to dress up for him at all to look gorgeous. He looks just fine swimming in gray.

It doesn’t hurt though that he has the short sleeves of his uniform rolled up almost all the way to his shoulders. His arms seem bigger than they had been a couple weeks back, and Rick finds himself imagining him out in the prison yard, forehead beading sweat while he pushes weights up and down, up and down. He swallows and composes himself just in time to watch Daryl slide into the seat across from him.

“Didn’t have to come.”

“We’re friends, right?” Rick teases, nudging him under the table with his foot. It’s the most touching he’ll risk seeing as even a handshake is technically against the rules.

“Guess we are,” Daryl says, and in a glimmer of a moment, his eyes flick down Rick’s body. Or maybe he just looked down at the table. Maybe Rick’s just a stupid old bisexual divorcee with more hope than he has any right to have.

A whisper from that darker part of his mind.  _You have months to find out._  An image of Daryl bent over the metal table, fingers white-knuckling the edges. No other prisoners or visitors. No guards. Just the squeaking bolts and sighs and moans and ‘ _Rick_.’

Rick remembers the last time he’d arrested him, mere months before he caught Lori on the kitchen island, her legs around Shane’s waist. He remembers being outside of the fertilizer plant alone with him, letting Daryl reach into his duty belt and pull out the handcuffs himself. He remembers shuddering when he placed them into the center of his palm, warm fingers lingering on his skin, tracing the lines.

“ _I have a wife_.”

That’s what he’d said, choking the words out. Like there was any way for that moment to end that didn’t involve Daryl handcuffed in the back of the cruiser. Daryl had only shrugged and turned around, letting Rick cuff him and gently nudge him into the car.

When he’d gotten over the shock of her infidelity, when he’d realized how long he’d felt trapped in a stay-together-for-the-kid marriage, when he’d actually started feeling a little relieved; he’d replayed that moment a million times. He’d fantasized at least two dozen different endings, felt true regret that he hadn’t done something,  _anything_. Though he knew he really wouldn’t have done it any differently.

“What are those?” Daryl asks, nodding toward the small stack of photos laying face down on the table.

Rick slides them across the table, holding his body rigid so he won’t shudder when his fingertips brush briefly against Daryl’s knuckles. Daryl locks eyes with him, and he can’t help but think it’s intentional.

Another mental image. This one of Daryl in his lap in the metal chair, their clothes a pile on the table, their bodies one hot, writhing mass. He clears his throat.

“Thought you might want to see her,” Rick says, watching him turn the images over. They’re all pictures of his cat that Rick snapped on his cell phone. She’s sleeping in two of the three, eating in the other. As promised, she doesn’t do much else.

Daryl gets as close to smiling as Rick’s ever seen him, his face relaxing and the corners of his mouth migrating upwards a hair or two.

“She give you any trouble?” Daryl asks.

“Besides hair? No. She’s a sweetheart.” Rick watches Daryl go through the photos a second time. Next time, he’ll bring more. “Actually, I guess I’ll admit I sleep over on your couch sometimes. Wake up with her curled up behind my knees.”

“S’alright. You’re more’n welcome.”  

“Just tired after work. Your place is closer to the station.”

“Don’t need a reason. Still payin rent. Good somebody’s usin it.”

“I ate all your chips too. Figured they’d be stale by the time you got back to ‘em,” Rick says.

Daryl huffs a laugh at that, and Rick realizes that he actually can smile, and that it’s handsome as hell when it happens.

“You can use the bed by the way. She’d probably like that better,” Daryl says. “Sheets are in the hall closet. Coin laundry in the basement. Trash chute down the hall across from the elevator.”

Rick nods.

“Eat whatever you want,” Daryl adds. “Least I can offer.”

“Don’t have to offer me anything,” Rick says. “Favor for a friend.”

“Like my relationships a little more two-sided than that, Rick.”

“Relationship, huh?” Rick can’t help it. He locks eyes with him again, finds Daryl frustratingly inscrutable until he isn’t.

“Guess you don’t have the wife anymore,” he says softly, quietly enough that Rick barely hears, that the nearest prisoner certainly doesn’t.

“Guess I don’t.”

* * *

_13 Years Ago_

 

Daryl’s first apartment in the city was a shithole, and that was the opinion of someone born and raised in what most people imagine when they think of the word “shithole.” If Daryl’s childhood trailer and the shack he inherited from his daddy had both been bad, this was a goddamn nightmare.

The conditions weren’t strictly legal and there was no lease per se. But there was mildew up near the ceilings, peeling plaster, the occasional rat in the hallway, and enough cockroaches that he never ate at home if he could help it. The little food he had stayed in a small Igloo cooler he’d inherited from a previous tennant. He kept his few dishes in there too where he knew they’d be safe.

More than once, he awoke in the middle of the night tp to the sound of gunfire.

It was worth it though to be away from Negan, but that was the only tick in the pro column. Otherwise, it was motivation to get his shit together and get out of there as quick as possible.

The cat seemed like the universe saying a quiet “sorry” for all the shit it had put him through.

Not being an actual place to live meant that there was no trash service. A single dumpster down the alley out back was the closest they had. Technically it didn’t belong to the building either, but the soup kitchen never filled it up, nor did they bother making a fuss over the extra bags that inevitably appeared after hours.

It had rained recently, turning the alley into a series of small lakes that Daryl had to step around to avoid soaking his shoes. The cheap plastic had torn the second he took it out of the trash can, which meant he had to walk with it held at arm’s length in front of him, dripping some kind of murky brown liquid all over the asphalt.

He felt a sense of relief way disproportionate to the actual situation when he finally tossed the bag over the edge of the dumpster. Until something hissed at him from underneath, so loud that the trash banging against the metal sides did nothing to drown it out.

“Fuck!” Daryl edged backwards, huffing nervously after. It was probably a testament to his childhood that his first thought was “possum” and not “cat.” And he might have walked away without her, figuring a critter had taken temporary shelter for the night, if something moving hadn’t caught his eye—a swishing calico tail leaking out of the shadows.

Daryl dropped to his knees, ignoring the moisture seeping through the fabric to peer into the darkness. He could barely make her out beyond the slight shine of green eyes. She was nothing but a pair of pointed ears.

“Hey,” he said softly, patting the ground with his hand. “Hey sweetheart.”

“Mrow.” She sounded suspicious, like she wasn’t sure about this guy who’d just thrown a bunch of noisy stuff into a metal bin above her head.

“Yeah, hi.” He patted the ground again, wiggled his fingers to tempt her. “C’mere, darlin.”

She rewarded that coaxing with a single tip of one ear, tan with a drop of black.

“There ya go.” He moved his hand to the fabric of one thigh, scratching at it. Slowly, she emerged, creeping slowly toward the sound. He kept going until she was all the way out, testing the situation by running a hand over the top of her head.

She chirped, nuzzling against his palm before rolling over onto her back to show him her belly.

Even in the dim light, she was gorgeous—mostly white with smatterings of black and tan. Different colors framed either eye before continuing up onto her forehead where they met to form a peak around a small mountain of white fur.

She was also skin and bones, probably hanging around the dumpster hoping for edible scraps or something to hunt.

“You wanna come home with me, girl? Ain’t much, but I’ll feed ya and you can hunt the mice.”

The cat rolled back over and got up again, rubbing up against his legs when he stood up. He probably could have led her all the way home, but he picked her up just in case, football carrying her inside and up the stairs.

He was one floor below his before he heard a tiny squeal, jerking his head down the hallway to see Talia Lopez in what was clearly meant to be a princess costume, a shabby pink curtain worn as a dress, complete with one of those paper crowns from the Burger King a block over.

“Is that a kitty?”

“Found her outside. Needs to eat,” he said. She wasn’t even fighting the hold he had on her, curled up in his arms and purring away while she peered at Talia curiously. Probably glad to be out of the wet.

“What’s her name?” she asked, holding the edges of her would-be skirt and twirling a bit side to side while she talked.

“Ain’t got one yet. Any suggestions?”   
  
The little girl put a finger on her chin and screwed up her face before spewing out a mile-long list.

“Fluffy McFlufferkins, Princess Soft Mittens, Miss Louise, Reina Gato.” It all came out so fast it felt like one word.

“Miss Louise,” he repeated quietly. His grandma had been a Louise, his Lou-Lou when he was too small to pronounce the whole name. It could work. Plus, it would make the kid happy.

“What you think of that, girl?” he asked. “Miss Louise?”

“Mrow.”

“I think she likes it,” Talia said, before asking very quickly, “Can I pet her?”

“Think she’s friendly enough, but come in slow just in case.”

She did just that, slowly reaching up until she made contact with the fur of Miss Louise’s cheek. She didn’t seem to mind at all, closing her eyes when the little girl scratched gently at her fur. Daryl stood there with her in his arms, letting Talia pet her until her mother called her from somewhere inside their apartment and she scurried back inside.

Back in his apartment, he hunted for something safe enough to feed a cat. When he had nothing, he left her a bowl of water and a soft towel in what passed for a bathroom before running to the nearest drug store and grabbing a bag of food.

He found her snacking on a cockroach the size of a small country when he got back. But she happily munched down a small bowl of food as well.

“Think you and I are gonna get along just fine,” he said, sitting on the toilet lid and scratching at her cheek.

He was right.

* * *

_Present_

 

Rick never comes to visit him without pictures, and the stack seems to get a little bigger with every visit. He even manages to get a few rare pictures of Miss Louise playing. There’s one in particular of her on her back, her legs stretched out toward the camera, that makes Daryl miss her so much he almost wants to punch through the walls of his cell.

Rick too starts to become a deeper and deeper ache. Of course he’d wanted him from the moment he saw him. But there’d been times on and off over the years that he’d done a lot more than lust. There’d been regrets that they hadn’t met in some different way or in some different place or time.

But maybe things had always gone the way they were meant to.

“I don’t even sleep at home anymore,” Rick confesses. His visits have gone from sporadic things that happened only when he had a day off to a regular occurrence. Daryl never asks why, but he has to guess that Rick has taken the time slot off completely the table as far as work is concerned.

The confession that he pretty much lives in Daryl’s apartment seems perfectly timed. Daryl stares down at a picture of Rick in his bed, Miss Louise sprawled across a bare stomach. He can’t help but think that Rick hasn’t let himself go even one bit with age. Then again, Daryl’s own stomach is looking pretty toned these days. There’s not much else to do during recreation time, after all.

“I think I’d actually miss her,” Rick says, his second confession of the day.

“Yeah, I get it.” He really does. Even when she was younger and would make a day of shredding his couch cushions or knocking his glasses off the kitchen counter, he still loved her fiercely.

“I hope I get visitation hours when you get out of here.” Rick smiles, reaching over to touch another picture of her laying belly up in the crease between his thighs, her paws up in the air presumably kneading happily at nothing.

You could stay.

Daryl feels the words form on his tongue, even hears the faintest beginning of a sound catch somewhere deep in his own throat.

You could stay and we could fuck and make love and drink our morning coffee together and die old and happy side by side.

“You’re welcome anytime. Closer to the station, right?” Not quite what he wants to say, but at least it’s something.

Rick’s quiet for a minute, hands resting on the table top between them.

“Good,” he says. “Because I think I’d miss you too.”

And God if Daryl was allowed to touch him. He settles instead for placing his own hands on the table too, just close enough to feel the warmth coming off of Rick’s skin without rousing the guard on duty.

He doesn’t remember anything else they talk about for the rest of visiting hours, only blue eyes and the feeling of almost, almost,  _almost_  touching.

* * *

_8 Months Ago_

 

“Who’s Daryl to you anyway?” The boy—young man really—sat on the edge of a bed covered with simple gray sheets. Grabbing clothing items that Rick had thrown haphazardly to the floor, he tugged them back on. Rick reached up and touched a muscular shoulder before it disappeared beneath a simple black v neck, something he’d ignored earlier lest it shatter the fragile illusion.

Like Daryl Dixon would ever wear a v neck.

“No one,” Rick answered, and the fact that it was an honest answer actually stung a bit. Over a decade since he’d seen him and he still couldn’t shake the thoughts of what might have been. They came less often than they used to, but they still crept up, triggered by everything from arresting some other getaway driver to seeing a plaid shirt in the window of the thrift store near his favorite Chinese place.

Every time, he ended up in this place with this boy. Some other times, he ended up there anyway, indulging in something he was too chickenshit to seek out anywhere else.

“But you want him to be,” he said.

“I guess so,” Rick said. “More than I knew.”

“Sometimes shit just ain’t meant to be,” he said, sounding more like Daryl in that moment than he ever had before. If Rick was younger and his body could even think about a round two that quickly, he’d probably be at least semi-hard again. “But you can always come here to me.”

His nimble fingers flitted affectionately across Rick’s bare cock with no embarrassment. A little tease, bait to entice him to come back. To keep spending the kind of dirty money that made the world go round.

“Honestly, I’d rather you than half the dirty old perverts that show up here anyway.”

He left after that. No further comment and Rick didn’t ask for more details or care to. Instead he set to the task of picking up his own clothes and sliding them back on, unable to stop himself from pulling out the yellowed piece of paper tucked into a slot in his wallet.

Daryl had sent him a few letters over the years, most of them tucked away in a shoebox in his closet, but this one, the last one. He’d figured at the time that it was crap, that like all the other promises that he was going to get out of that life once and for all, it wouldn’t actually come to pass and Rick would wind up seeing him again in a couple months when he cuffed him yet again.

He even remembered thinking,  _“maybe then...”_

But there was no maybe then. The letter told Rick that he planned on leaving King County, that he was being forced into another job and that he was done. He wasn’t going to tell him where he was going, didn’t really even know where himself. He said he’d have to lay low.

“Wish things could’ve been different,” he’d written, and that line had tormented Rick off and on for over a decade. What things?  _What things?_  “Funny cause I hope I never see you again but then I don’t hope that at all.”

Rick folded it back up, carefully coaxing it back into its hiding place. It already had a few holes along the creases from years of being carried around and read whenever the whim struck. The thought of losing it or giving it up wasn’t even one he could entertain, and he’d had more than one nightmare about watching it crumble to dust in his hands.

Sighing, he stood up, pulling his jeans up over his hips and fastening them shut. Shirt and boots and he made his way through the labyrinthine halls, down the back stairs, and into a noisy bar that hid the entrance to something a lot more thrilling than a glass of whiskey. He didn’t always, but this night in particular he stopped and had more than a few of those too before leaving.

A taxi home, and he fell asleep on the sofa, still dressed with the TV on.

* * *

_Present_

 

For the first time in a long time, Daryl doesn’t know how he’ll get home from jail. In the past, someone was always there waiting for him. Dwight, Simon, Arat (whose real name was Megan but God forbid you ever call her that). He’d hated it and what it represented every single time, but at least he’d known someone would be there. Out of one jail and into another.

This time though, he’s on his own, and the thought is a little scary but mostly exhilarating. The idea that he’s finally, finally free from Sons of Sanctuary probably won’t sink in for a very long time. In that context, being on his own feels amazing, even if it will mean the headache of walking to the gas station five miles up the road to get on a bus.

Of course, he feels like a total and complete moron for thinking he’d ever have to figure shit out on his own when he exits the prison gates to find a black sedan sitting on the side of the road, Rick Grimes leaning casually against its frame in painted on black jeans and a white tee shirt.

The first thing he does is reach out and touch him. It’s not sexual in any way, but it still makes Daryl sigh quietly, his nerves sending tingles up his fingers. The simple act of being able to lay his hand on Rick’s forearm after so many months of being forced to do nothing but look at each other is more amazing than he ever thought it could be.

Rick takes it further, reaching forward to pull Daryl into a hug. It’s not brief either, stretching on and on until no one witnessing it could even try to shake it off as friendly. Tension blossoms in Daryl’s stomach and chest, swelling and tightening a little more with every second that ticks by, with every slow swipe of Rick’s hand up and down his back.

A little voice in his head whispers  _kiss him, kiss him, kiss him._

He starts to shift, to look into those blue eyes that have haunted him in some way, shape, or form for decades. Rick licks his lips, starts to slide his hand up from the small of Daryl’s back.

“Mrow.”

The spell breaks and Daryl’s head snaps toward the car. He takes two quick steps to duck his head into the back window, his heart constricting happily at the sight of a little blue cat carrier strapped into the backseat.

“Figured she should be here to welcome you back to civilian life,” Rick says. “Permanently.”

“Permanently,” Daryl agrees, sticking his fingers through the metal cage of the carrier’s door to nudge tiny paws. Miss Louise immediately butts up against the door, rubbing her face and cheeks on his fingertips.

“Missed you too, girl,” Daryl mutters. “So much.”

Arms wrap around him from behind, a head resting on his shoulder. Rick’s hand slides down his arm and over his fingertips to scratch at one of the cat’s cheeks.

“Are you ready to go home?” he asks quietly, his lips brushing the nape of Daryl’s neck.

“Shoulda gone home with you a long time ago,” Daryl says.

“Should’ve asked you to.” Rick gives him a quick squeeze and then walks around the car, pulling open the door and sliding into the driver’s seat. Daryl follows him in, buckling himself into a seatbelt and a future that finally seems to be on the right track.

He spends the whole car ride reaching back to pet his cat through the door of her carrier, one of Rick’s hands warm on his knee, a constant presence from the rural roads outside the prison to the busy streets of Atlanta.

Back at home, the first thing they do is feed the cat. Daryl always found civilian life a little daunting after his other stints in jail. Transitioning from strict schedules that never wavered into the chaos of the world at large was always jarring.

But this, carefully mixing Miss Louise’s food with Rick sitting on top of his kitchen counter, legs swinging—it feels like the most natural things in the world, like the past months spent behind bars were just a dream he had once.

He’s awake now. Awake to every glance Rick gives him. Awake to eyes that fall on him with everything from longing to lust. Rick’s patience finally breaks at the dull clink that comes when Daryl sets the cat dish down on the tile.

“Come here,” he says, raising his arms slightly. Daryl steps between his legs, every millisecond it takes to position himself there filling his stomach with stones. He knows what’s coming and so does Rick.

A hand snakes to the back of his neck and decades of wishes and hopes and regrets, regrets,  _so many regrets_  fall away the second their lips brush. And Daryl knows that soft, meandering kisses will come someday, but neither one of them can hold back now, not after all the years and months of waiting.

Rick groans softly in the back of his throat and deepens the kiss within seconds, his fingertips pressing into the flesh below Daryl’s hairline. His other hand finds its way to Daryl’s lower back, pulling him closer.

Daryl doesn’t even realize he’s rutting against him until he hears himself moan.

How in the hell Rick manages to pull away for even a second, he’ll never know, but he does, gasping in a breath and then gently moving Daryl forward with hands on his shoulders.

Rick knows exactly where the bed is and takes them both down the short hallway, shutting the door behind them.

“Lay down, sugar,” Rick says, voice low and husky, barely above a whisper.

Daryl crawls onto the mattress and lays down on his stomach. A quiet laugh behind him, not at all mocking, just amused.

“Not exactly what I had in mind just yet, but it’ll work,” Rick says.

Daryl feels his face heat against a pillow he knows is his even though it smells like someone else.

The bed sinks next to his feet, the pressure moving up the mattress until he feels Rick settle himself onto him, sitting on his butt. Hands find the hem of his shirt and creep under it, pushing it up while fingertips dance across his skin.

He should care about the scars crisscrossing his back—the ones his Dad left, the ones Negan added after he honed in on the exact form of torture that would break a lot more than Daryl’s body. But he trusts Rick with everything, even those.

Rick’s fingers knead into the skin on his shoulders, pressing into the muscles and rubbing deep. He repeats the action, up and down and up and down Daryl’s back, massaging away the tension of months on the inside, of more years as a prisoner of circumstance.

Daryl sighs and moans quietly, letting him work. When Rick shifts farther down his body to knead into his ass and thighs, he starts rutting again, his body slowly humping into the mattress while he pants quietly with need.

“Turn over, sweetheart,” Rick says, and Daryl does. Rick slides between his legs easily, rucking up his shirt to kiss above the hemline of his jeans, up his stomach, across the jutting bones of his rib cage. A soft kiss to his sternum, and Rick moves higher, finding Daryl’s mouth again.

Bodies roll together, fingers pull at his hair, scratch at his scalp.

Daryl’s heart fills and fills and fills and he wants to scream,  _“I love you”_  at the top of his lungs but he can’t. So he pours it out through kisses and touches, through a hand stroking along Rick’s stubble and playing with the edges of his curls.  

A single eyebrow raised and two hands on his jeans button, Rick asks if he can push on. Daryl nods so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t get whiplash. Rick shoves his jeans down, finds his cock and gently strokes it. It’s barely hard, if you can even call it that.

“Sorry,” Daryl says, heat rising in his cheeks again.

“Doesn’t matter,” Rick says, massaging the length in his hand. “Does it still feel good?”

“So good.”

Rick’s roams along him expertly, and when his other hand joins in to softly roll Daryl’s balls between nimble fingers, a groan falls from between his lips. For what it’s worth, his cock is trying. It’s not the full impressive stand-at-attention shit of his youth, but it’s something, and Rick’s gentle rubbing and coaxing isn’t hurting anything.

“Are you…?” Daryl asks, leaning up to look at the front of his jeans.

“Somewhat,” he says. “Takes a little effort for me too these days, and I admit I might have pharmaceutical help.”

Daryl softly nudges his hands away and sits up. Rick seems to know exactly where he’s headed, his hands threading through Daryl’s hair. Daryl struggles with the button, his hands shaking, but he manages in the end, pushing Rick’s jeans down to his knees.

He feels a little less embarrassed when Rick’s half-soft cock greets him, even less embarrassed still when he realizes how little he cares, how little Rick must care too. Stroking his thumbs across Rick’s hips, he ducks his head and licks a stripe of saliva from root to tip. Above him, Rick sighs, scratching at his scalp again.

It’s not Daryl’s first blowjob. There’ve been guys here and there over the years—quick flings, other Sons of Sanctuary guys, even fleeting moments stolen in the shadows of the prison. Hell, there’d been a bunkmate he’d had about six weeks once before the idiot got himself sent to max that had no problem spending a few minutes every night “helping each other out” as he put it.

But this is different. Years of lead up, months of falling in love. He takes the head of Rick’s budding erection in between his lips and looks up at him while he circles the rim with his tongue. A gentle flutter in just the right spot, and he actually watches Rick’s pupils swallow a few more millimeters of blue.

He’s just as gorgeous as he was the first night he met him, even more so maybe. And now he’s his.

Letting his eyes close, he pushes farther down the length of Rick’s cock, his lips sliding down soft flesh. He makes it all the way to the hilt without much effort and uses his tongue to massage the underside while he revels in the feeling of Rick hardening in his mouth, forcing his lips farther and farther up the base until he has all of him pushing down his throat.

“That feels incredible,” he says, voice low and husky. “I should’ve known you’d be perfect at this.”

Humming quietly in reply, Daryl starts to bob up and down the length. He starts slowly at first, then builds up the pace until he can hear the slick sounds of his lips slipping through his own saliva. He uses one free hand to tickle Rick’s balls, uses the other to gently circle and massage the puckered rim of Rick’s hole.

Above him, low groans rumble through Rick’s chest and out into the bedroom. Their bedroom. He may as well help Rick move his things in tomorrow.

Another swipe of Rick’s fingertips through his hair and he gently tugs Daryl’s face off of him, one thumb migrating down to softly rub across his bottom lip.

“Lay back again for me, sugar,” he says, and Daryl obeys, letting Rick finish removing his pants before starting in on his own, kicking off his boots and working the jeans the rest of the way off. He tugs the tee shirt off next and knee walks up the mattress before kneeling right next to Daryl’s face. One thigh migrates over the top of him until he’s practically sitting on his face. Then Rick leans forward toward his feet, slowly running his hands down Daryl’s body as he gets on his hands and knees, the two of them a perfectly aligned, if inverted pair.

It’s easy from there to take Rick’s cock back into his mouth, easier still to let it flood down his entire throat. Rick gently rolls in and out of the slickness and Daryl bobs up to meet him.

His own cock doesn’t go long without attention. Rick’s fingers find it and hold it still so he can pull it into his own mouth, both of them sucking each other, groaning around one another simultaneously. At some point, slick fingers start to gently massage his hole. He moans a little more around Rick’s erection.

“Lube?” Rick asks, one hand working up and down Daryl’s cock with fervor.

Somehow, though he doesn’t know exactly how, Daryl manages to reach over, open the night stand drawer, and retrieve the bottle inside without even needing Rick to stop fucking his mouth.

Rick takes it from him, leans back down and kisses him right on the head of his cock.

“Are you okay with this?” he asks. “With me making love to you?”

Daryl chokes an “mhm” out around the flesh between his lips. He’s more okay with it than he’s ever been with anything in his entire life. And those words, “making love.” They’d always seemed so cheesy before, but now that they pertain to him instead of some pretty face in a movie, they make his rib cage feel a little too tight.

Rick draws Daryl back into his mouth before he starts fondling him again. His fingers are even wetter now, slicked with lubricant. He’s gentle and teasing at first, massaging the pucker, circling it, massaging again. The breaches come slowly too, little dips of his fingers while he’s humming quietly around Daryl’s erection. Dip, dip, hum, dip.

And Daryl tries to focus on giving it back as good as he’s getting it, but sometimes all he can do is let his head fall back, let Rick use his mouth and his throat, slowly rolling his hips to fuck into them both.

The first full finger inside of him precedes a jolt of intensity that makes Daryl jump and gag around Rick. Rick pulls out enough that he can breathe through his nose again, his thrusts shallower until Daryl catches his breath. Until he starts moaning again at the combo of Rick’s mouth and hands.

Another finger and Rick pushes against his prostate with both, rubbing it in circles while he doubles down on the blowjob to end all blowjobs. He slurps and sucks and flicks his tongue until Daryl’s almost dizzy.

Three fingers and the dull pressure inside of him already feels like the air before a Georgia thunderstorm. Charged and ionized and waiting to burst. If he doesn’t end up having the best orgasm of his entire life today, he’ll be a lot more than surprised.

When Rick finally pulls out and off of him, Daryl spreads his legs wide in anticipation. Rick wastes no time smearing lube on himself and easing slowly inside, deeper and deeper until he feels like he’s as much a part of him physically as he is everything else.

“Fuck,” Daryl gasps, ever a sucker for the feeling of that first slide. And an even bigger sucker for the man doing it.

“You have no idea how many times I imagined this,” Rick says. “How many times I imagined you.” He finds the lube again, squeezing a drop onto his palm before wrapping it around Daryl’s cock. Then he starts thrusting—slow, meandering things that he matches with the pace of his strokes—up and down and in and out. Everything deliciously and perfectly timed to make Daryl insane.  

But that’s not the part that really kills him. It’s the look Rick has fixed on him, his brow a little furrowed in concentration, his eyes practically black with lust and bursting with intensity. Daryl takes it in and everything that it means, feeling a bit like someone’s reachin into his chest squeezing tightly.

“I love you,” Daryl says, a little surprised that it slips out when it feels like just seconds ago he couldn’t say it. In response, Rick’s eyelids flutter. Like he got more pleasure from hearing that than from anything he’s getting out of Daryl’s body.

“I love you too,” he says softly, blue eyes open again and focused. “Think I always have.”

It’s Daryl’s turn to revel in it, and he has to admit, maybe it does feel better than the actual sex.

Like he can hear his thoughts and takes them as a challenge, Rick starts to move his hips a little faster, his hand picking up speed to match.

“Rick,” Daryl moans, because he finally can.

“Daryl,” Rick says back, voice low and husky and barely more than a whisper. His free hand squeezes into the flesh of Daryl’s upper thigh.  

It’s not the frantic fucking Daryl used to get up to, despite how bad they wanted each other. Rick does fuck him hard at times, thrusting and thrusting until the bed shakes and they’re both grunting and panting and swearing.

But they’re both slow to finish, and in between the frantic fucking is slow, languid lovemaking. Rick changes positions too, lowering himself on top of Daryl so they can lazily make out while Rick gently fills him and pulls out and fills him again.

There’s more lube added in. Near the end, Daryl takes the bottle and wets a single finger, slipping it inside Rick and massaging him where it counts.

“Shit. Gonna cum,” Rick says. “Can I do it inside of you?”

Daryl’s never wanted anything so much in his life.

“You do it anywhere else, and I’ll ask you to leave.”

A dazzling smile cracks across Rick’s face and he moves to stroke Daryl faster, this time taking great care to give little squeezes in all the right place. Panting heavily, Daryl keeps up his own movements, still stroking over Rick’s prostate with steady circles.

Rick breaks first, pressing his lips against the flesh of Daryl’s neck and groaning roughly against his skin. Daryl keeps massaging until Rick stops thrusting and stills on top of him, his mouth close enough to Daryl’s ear that he can hear him panting.

Daryl slips his finger out and wraps both arms around him, just enjoying the weight of Rick on top of him, the comfort of it all. He’s not done yet, but he knows Rick won’t leave him hanging, and he’s patient. They might have gotten a late start, but they still have plenty of time. A few soft kisses on his neck and Rick slides out, cum trailing behind him. There was a time that alone would’ve made Daryl shoot off. As it is, it still makes him shudder in the best way.

Rick presses a kiss to his temple and then his lips before going back down his body, peppering kisses between his pecs and down the lightly tones lines of his stomach. He bypasses Daryl’s cock, making an arc across his right hip and then across his upper leg. His hands reach under Daryl’s thighs, pulling them up and exposing everything to him. With anyone else, he’d be shaking with nerves. With Rick, there’s only anticipation.

And Rick answers that anticipation by lapping at him hungrily, slurping up cum and lube and diving his tongue inside. One hand leaves Daryl’s leg and finds his cock, stroking it quickly from base to tip and again and again. He keeps licking and fucking him with his tongue, the hand occasionally moving down to fondle his balls before stroking him again.

Finally, he licks a line all the way from Daryl’s hole to the tip of his erection. He engulfs him once more while he slips multiple fingers inside. A few more seconds is all it takes to finally push Daryl over the top.

“Rick, fuck,” he moans, following it up with the tiniest whimper. And then he’s cumming, his cock dribbling onto Rick’s tongue, and fuck if you can’t feel Rick’s mouth moving around him in very obvious swallows, gulping down every drop like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted in his life.

When it’s all over, Rick crawls back up and falls onto the mattress beside him, everything damp with sweat. He turns on his side to face him and Daryl does the same, tentatively reaching a hand up to touch the graying stubble along Rick’s jaw. The curls are next, practically dripping with sweat when Daryl fingers through them.

“Think you might be hotter now than the first time you busted me,” Daryl says. Rick’s mouth twitches into a small smile.

“If I could go back, I’d do things differently,” he says. “Pick you up from prison that first time, maybe. Keep you away from...”

“You’re here now,” Daryl says.

“I am, and I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Rick’s clearly joking, smiling softly while his fingertips flutter down Daryl’s bicep. “Troublemaker.”

“Narc.”

That earns him a soft laugh that he wants to live inside of forever. He brushes some of the laugh lines around Rick’s eyes with his thumb.

They stay like that for a while before they finally put on underwear and open the door. Then they stay like that even longer, Miss Louise curled up between their feet, purring loud enough that they can feel it in their toes. Outside, the shadows lengthen into night. They alternate between talking and between saying nothing, fingers and lips exploring each others’ faces and bodies whenever the whim strikes.  

“Was thinkin,” Daryl starts.

“Hmm?”

“You’ve pretty much been livin here anyway,” he says, “and you said the station’s closer.”

“If you’re askin me to stay, sweetheart, I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me.”

“Then I guess you’re never leavin.”

Another muted smile, and Rick leans forward to kiss him again.

“Fine by me.”

* * *

_One Year, Two Months Later_

 

They consider it their anniversary. Rick had been playing around when he first suggested it, but it made sense considering it was when they really started. 16 years exactly since he arrested Daryl for the first time of many.

They spend the morning making love. Somedays their sex is pills and lots of coaxing and trying. Sometimes they get nothing close to hard and it’s all oral stimulation and hands and fingers. Somedays there are toys, increasingly bigger things Rick uses on him with awe. Daryl likes those days a lot.

But out of all if it, he prefers the languid lovemaking that stretches on, the up and down of it and the way they go from slow to frantic to slow again. Something about how often they can actually manage it makes it all the more special when it actually happens.

This isn’t one of those days, but lying on their sides, kissing and rutting against each other while they massage each other’s prostates is good enough. And it gets them there, both of them staining the sheets at different times, moaning their orgasms into kisses and bare skin.

After that, they have a late breakfast. They usually try eat healthy (Daryl’s cigarettes excluded), but this isn’t one of them. Rick pops out and comes back with a full box of assorted donuts and coffee, and they gorge themselves on them like they’re still twenty. Daryl licks the sugar from Rick’s fingers like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and they exchange saccharine kisses until Miss Louise starts yelling at them for food.

She’s still hanging on, and Rick jokes all the time about how it’s fitting Daryl found a cat just like him, tough as nails and too stubborn to go anywhere. Somedays Daryl has to feed her out of his hand to get her to eat, but other days she cleans her dish bare before she finds a lap to curl up in.

Today, she clearly plans to eat, and Daryl makes her food carefully before going back to the couch and plopping down next to Rick, their knees touching.

“How much longer do I have you?” Daryl asks, glancing at the time on his phone. Rick’s schedule is some kind of rotating thing Daryl just can’t seem to memorize. They keep talking about printing it out and putting it on the fridge, but they also keep procrastinating or outright forgetting.  

“You really don’t think I’d ask for the day off?” Rick teases. “It’s my anniversary.”

“Thought crime never takes a day off?” Daryl teases back. Rick had said it a while back when Daryl complained about him having to pull too much overtime. (In Rick’s defense, he supposes a double-murder was a solid reason for working more.)

“What do you wanna do?”

“Same thing we do every anniversary,” Daryl says. “You pretend to arrest me outside of some shitty warehouse, and then I worm my way out of it. That last part might be new.”

“If I’d known there’d be handcuffs involved, we wouldn’t have had sex already.”

“Maybe today’s the day we finally manage to go two rounds,” Daryl says. Most days he’s fine with the way things turned out in the end and with the fact that he gets to be with Rick at all, but every now and then, he does wish he could be young again just once. That they could have one good stamina-fueled day of fucking and sucking and only stopping when absolutely necessary to rehydrate.  

“You know,” Rick says. “When I first moved here, I found this barbecue place. Meat so tender it practically melts in your mouth. I think I got lunch there every day one week.”

Food gone, Miss Louise refuses to be left out of their conversation, hopping up onto Rick’s lap and kneading into his thigh. Traitor. Daryl has accused her more than once of her picking Rick’s lap over his because he has juicier legs.

“I remember thinking about you one day and wonderin if you liked barbecue, and then all I could think about was sittin there in a booth with you lickin sauce off your fingers,” Rick says. “Which I’ll admit to jerkin off to later that night, but I guess I’m tryin to ask if you wanna go out to eat.”

“That was real romantic.” Daryl rolls his eyes.

“Like you didn’t jerk off to me a few times over the years,” Rick says. And Daryl actually laughs at that.

“Pfft. A few?” He shakes his head. “Man, I can’t even remember when it was, long time ago. But I had a dream about you. I woke up sticky and sweaty but still hard. One of those days you can’t shake it no matter how many times you get off. Practically rubbed myself raw thinking about you.”

Rick takes that in, absentmindedly stroking the cat who gives approximately zero shits about their sex lives past or present.

“But it sounds good,” Daryl says. “Goin out to eat, like normal people.”

“We are normal people,” Rick says. “Mostly.”

Just your average police detective all-but-married to a convicted felon. Very normal.

Daryl doesn’t argue though, choosing instead to lean over onto Rick the best he can without disturbing the cat. He’ll probably never get tired of Rick’s fingers in his hair, not that he’d ever admit it out loud.

The two of them stay like that until late in the afternoon. Miss Louise only moves once, traipsing off to visit her water dish and the litter box before coming back and settling half on top of each of them.

They both pet her favorite spots and enjoy being near each other. The conversation is easy. The silence is even easier.

A little after five, Rick mutters an apology to the cat and gently picks her up, moving her onto one of her frequent spots on the back of the couch. She glares at him, but goes back to sleep.  

The barbecue is good, really good, but the company is better. Daryl makes a huge show of licking sauce off his fingers, which he has to admit is something he probably would’ve done anyway. In response, Rick gives him a few lust-fueled gazes that they both know probably won’t actually go anywhere.

And when the server asks if they want pie, they don’t refuse like they usually would. They both have heaping slices of pecan and chocolate cream, stealing bites from each others’ plates without much fuss. (Okay, Daryl might threaten to stab Rick in the hand with his fork, but only to distract him long enough to retaliate.)

It’s a good day, one that celebrates the fact that they’re together and the fact that they’ve belonged together for a long time. They don’t need fanfare or big declarations or fancy restaurants where you pay $50 for a single pea on a plate. Maybe they’re too old for all that, or maybe it was never right for them anyway.

But just being together, comfortably and without the past getting in the way? That feels right enough, and after all these years, Daryl will sure as hell take it.

 

 

 


End file.
